10 Essential WordPress Plugins for Travel Blogging
There are countless tools to promote a website on the Internet. Social networking sites such as twitter and StumbleUpon have become essential to driving traffic to a blog. While it is important to attract readers to your travel blog, it is even more important to keep them on your site. You want your readers to spend time exploring your hard work.
Plugins for your wordpress can help considerably. They are easy to install and easy to use. By allowing your readers to easily share your post and find other related posts, you will give them the tools they need to promote your site and to stay on your blog for longer periods.
The Key is to Keep things simple for your readers
Here are some of our most useful plugins that we have installed into our blog.
Easy Retweet - Twitter has become a powerhouse in social networking. If a post goes viral on twitter, it can drive huge traffic to your site. It is important to make it easy for your readers to share your article with their followers. Easy Retweet is our favourite plugin for this task. It instantly shrinks your url to fit into Twitter’s 140 character rule. When you go into settings, make sure to add your twitter name ie @theplanetd to the message prefix. I can’t tell you how many blogs I visit that I want to tweet their post only to have their tweet button not preshrink the url and not include their twitter name. Nobody has the time to look up twitter names and nobody want to have the extra step of shrinking their url on bit.ly or su.pr
Digg Digg – This plugin is excellent for allowing you to choose your favourite social bookmarking sites to stand out at the top of your post. We like twitter, stumbleupon and facebook. The digg digg plugin puts their icons into a neat line allowing your readers to easily share your post to their accounts.
Our digg digg bookmarks
Add this social bookmarking – not everyone uses the same social bookmarking sites. Some people enjoy using yahoo buzz, delicious or reddit to name a few. This Plugin gives your readers the option to bookmark your article on their favourite social media sites. Add This offers a choice of almost 300 bookmarking and sharing sites.
comment luv - Comments on blogs are important. We have heard that they help with SEO and we like to encourage conversation. What we love about blogging is that people can instantly share their opinions. They can offer a different point of view from ours. We aren’t always right in our observations about a place and people may disagree with our opinion. We welcome conversation and we encourage this by linking to a persons latest post when they leave a comment. Comment luv encourages other bloggers and readers to leave a comment because it also drives traffic to their website. If they leave an engaging comment, people will be interested in more of what they have to say and comment luv posts the title of their latest blog post.
Amy @ The Q Family says:What a great story! I have been following you guys for a really long time but it’s nice to read about your ‘Why’.
Amy @ The Q Family´s last blog ..Atlanta With Kids- Geckos at Fernbank Museum
A recent comment from on of our favourite bloggers, Amy
Fast and Secure contact form – As our blog started to take off, we started to receive far more junk mail. That is because we used to have our email posted on our website. Our inbox was becoming cluttered with spam so we decided to take off our email and offer readers an easy way to contact us with Fast and Secure Contact form. It works exactly like email. You simply have to fill out the required fields and your message is instantly forwarded to our email address.
Our Contact Form
LinkWithin – Keeping your bounce rate low is important for google rankings. Besides, you want people to stick around longer than just one post. LinKWithin encourages people to read more of your work. At the end of the post an attractive line of squares lists your related posts along with its photo or icon. Having a visual link attracts people to read more than a simple text link.
LinkedWithin Plugin
Post Navigation Widget – Sometimes people simply want to follow an arrow. Having the post navigation widget installed allows people to read your previous or next post once they are finished reading your current post.
post navigation
Side Bar Tabs- It is important to give people many opportunities to stay on your page. The Side Bar Tabs Plugin gives you the freedom to display your favourite posts, most commented posts and most recent posts. Readers don’t want to have to search hard for anything. Make it simple for them to see some of your best work by installing this plugin. It is easy to follow its tabs to read more.
Our Sidebar Tabs
Shadowbox - As a photo heavy travel blog, we like to give people the chance to look at our photos full screen with an attractive background. Shadowbox dims the background and enlarges the image when a person clicks on it. If there are several images in a post, your readers can view them all in the shadowbox mode by clicking on the arrows and viewing them as a slideshow.
How a photo looks in Shadowbox
Subscribe remind - Gaining email subscribers to your blog seems to be very important to google. It is also very important to a Blogger to have people reading your posts regularly. Even though you probably have an RSS Icon installed on your blog, it is good to remind people that they can subscribe. By adding the Subscribe Remind plugin you will let your readers know that they can get instant updates on their google reader or in their inbox at the end of each post.
“If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed for latest posts via email or on your homepage!”
Other Posts Related to Travel Blogging tools and advice
- Top Applications for Travel Bloggers
- Tips to keep your blog running while travelling
- The Business of Travel Blogging
- Blog Changes and Website Business
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Usefull Information. I have got the important information from your blog.
Great post – I switched some of my plug-ins after reading this. Many thanks!
This is a great list. I have used most of the plugin from your list but also learned about a couple new plugins that I will implement on my blog. Thanks!
.-= Amy @ The Q Family´s last blog ..Atlanta With Kids- Geckos at Fernbank Museum =-.
Thanks Amy! Did you notice we put your smiling face on our post:-)
Thanks for this roundup. I’m actually not a big fan of the “share this” plugin because it’s quite cluttered – I wish you could choose a minimal amount of the sharing options. I’ve opted against it because visually I’m not sold. But! I am completely sold on Link Within, thanks to your post. I used YARPP but really like LW’s use of thumbnails and have set it up on my blog instead. Thanks & safe travels! Jodi
.-= Jodi (Legal Nomads)´s last blog ..Why I Love my Burmese Longyi =-.
Thanks Jodi. I don’t find the share this cluttered until it is opened. It is only a small line at the bottom of the post until you click on it. Is that what you are talking about? We like it because it gives people options to share with their own favourite sites. I have gone to other peoples blogs and they don’t have facebook or stumbleupon (which are the two I use the most) I end up not sharing their post at all because it involves an extra step. For us, we just like to give people options. But it is definitely not for everyone.
Glad you like Link Within. We can’t get over how many hits we get from it when we view our stats. It is right up there in our top referrers. So in essence, we are one of our top referrers to our own blog because of using Link Within:-)
Awesome list of plugins. I have several of these, but not all of them, and I’ll probably be installing the rest sometime today. Thanks for the list!!
.-= Adam´s last blog ..Picture of the Week 09-20-2010 =-.
Love knowing what you guys have found helpful – there are soooo many plugins out there! Great list!
I know, the list could go on and on. We are always finding more and taking others off. But we have enjoyed the ones listed above.
Great round up and an even better reminder to add commentluv to my site!
.-= ayngelina´s last blog ..12 things I hate about traveling =-.
Thanks! Comment luv is great!
Great list, thanks so much!!!
.-= Andi´s last blog ..Planning Netherlands & Spain =-.
Thanks for these great tips. I have some of these on my Typepad blog, but I’m in the middle of switching to WordPress so I’m going to make sure to include these. Especially Comment Luv!
.-= Travelogged´s last blog ..Scotland Scenery- Panoramas Shot With Sonys iSweep Technology =-.
Good luck with switching to WordPress. I love comment luv too. Going to check out your Scotland post today!
Great list and it has some of my favourites! Shame I can never get the Side Bar Tabs to work on my site no matter how much I tried!
.-= Corinne @ Gourmantic´s last blog ..Marsala-Trapani Salt Route- Egadi Islands- Windmills and Salt Marshes =-.
Hey Gourmantic. We were just thinking about the Side Bar Tabs and Dave remembers that he had to do something to tweek it a bit to make it work. He is going to go through the code and figure out what made it work. Because we had the same problem at first too. We just can’t remember exactly what we did. When we take a look at it and figure it out, we will post it up on this article and give everyone a heads up through the comments.
I wish I knew about LinkWithin earlier – I’ve had to write my own plugin to achieve the same thing
.-= Slava´s last blog ..The City of Ouarzazate Kasbah =-.
That sucks. But at least you knew about code well enough to write your own plugin!
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Thanks for the roundup.
I’ve been using the backtype retweet button for two reasons, 1. it doesn’t force users to authorize another application on Twitter- it justs retweets for you, and 2. It retweets in your twitter name, unlike tweetmeme which I used to use.
I love the subscribe remind. I added it and played around a bit because it was a little too discreet for my liking. Now it looks great!
Linkwithin is something that I think I will try next. Currently using YARPP, which I have been happy with.
I recently changed blog themes and had to change all the image sizes as they didn’t fit my new theme, which was annoying. I would like to be able to show bigger images though. Does the plugin keep stats of how many people view the larger images?
.-= Thailand Hotels blog´s last blog ..5 Fantastic Islands for Diving in Thailand =-.
Thanks for all the great info!
Backype retweet sounds great! We played around with different retweet buttons. We had a lot of problems with Tweetmeme and switch. Maybe we will give backtype retweet a try. We really like backtype connect (another great plugin) that tells you when people retweet your posts and gives you the option to post them on your site. It hasn’t worked with other bookmarking sites though like facebook or others. It only seems to notify us about Twitter. Anyone else notice this?
I agree with the Subcribe remind, we are going to have to go into the code and make the font larger. An easy fix, but that is Dave’s job, I am afraid of going into code without him around:-)
I will check out YARPP too. I didn’t know about it.
I don’t know anything about a plug in that keeps stats on the larger image. We have the image linked to Dave’s smugmug account, so I think that it counts the views on his smugmug stats.
I’m so glad I found this really useful post. I learned a lot and will definitely be adding some of these plugins to my site. I especially like the way LinkWithin looks and think it could make a huge difference. Thank you!
Great – really useful stuff, thanks!
.-= Emma´s last blog ..A Parisian love affair =-.
Very helpful list of plug ins. I have been looking for a side bar tab one for ages. Thank you!
.-= Caz Makepeace´s last blog ..Journal Extracts- In my Undies with a Policeman on the Streets of Rome =-.
LinkWithin looks great. Been looking for a plugin like that for awhile and couldn’t seem to find anything. Going to try to implement that soon. The Facebook Like button plugin is also something you may want to add to the list. Have seen about a 12% increase in traffic from that.
.-= Buzz´s last blog ..How To Play Crazy Train On Guitar with Tab =-.
Thanks Buzz, our like button is actually included in our Digg Digg. We bundled stumbleupon, tweet this and facebook like into one package to make it all neat looking. Thanks for the comment.
Wow – great collection of plugins! I wondered how you did your ‘related posts’ section – I’m definitely going to give LinkWith a try.
Also, on AddThis, one of the cool benefits is that you can log into your account there and see a tracking report of which posts are being shared on which networks – really good insight for folks that like to track stuff like that….
Thanks for sharing your list!
.-= Trisha Miller´s last blog ..Review- Why Your Website Sucks =-.
Thanks Trisha. There were many great photos to choose from, I didn’t want to put them all up and give away the tour:-) We will be posting the final photos from the tour. Cheers!
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Really useful post! I’m not sure if we’re ready to have a Twitter counter on our blog yet – we’ll see. The LinkWithin seems pretty nifty, but when I did a plugin search on wordpress I couldn’t find it. oh well. Thanks for the helpful tips! – Michael
.-= darngooddigs´s last blog ..Five Historic Paradores for Culture Vultures – on a Budget =-.
Hey Darn Good Digs, if you click on the word LinkWithin just under our LinkWithin posts, it will take you right to the page. Hope that helps. Dave and Deb
Better yet, here is the link http://www.linkwithin.com/learn?ref=widget
Thanks Dave n Deb – got it!
.-= darngooddigs´s last blog ..Five Historic Paradores for Culture Vultures – on a Budget =-.
I need to do an update on my plugins soon, so thanks for recommending some of your favorites!
.-= Migrationology´s last blog ..Buffet Fighting- My First Meal Adventure in Vietnam =-.
This was such a helpful post–thanks so much! I have always meant to add CommentLuv but never got around to it…this was a good motivation to do it! Just added it and already love it.
I also was wondering how people were doing the related post thing like you guys did. Thanks for sharing what you use–I just downloaded LinkWithin and it’s on my site now, and I really like it! It’s not really pulling up things I think are related, but probably because in addition to specific tags, I also tag nearly everything with “travel.” So maybe it thinks everything is related! Oops. Do you usually tag things as “travel” or only more specific tags? Curious as to what you guys think on that.
.-= Emily at Maiden Voyage´s last blog ..Travel Contest- Free RTW Flights and Spending Money =-.
Linkwithin sounds good. Not heard of that one before. When it comes to plug ins, I really should insert a lot more but end up getting side tracked when surfing the web!
.-= Natalie – Turkish Travel Blog´s last blog ..Turkish Men – Why Your Holiday Romance Is Doomed =-.
Hi Dave and Deb, thanks for this list of cool plugins! I have been wondering how you got your website to look so good.
I definitely will be trying LinkedWithin.
That’s a great point about pre-shrinking the URL and making sure your Twitter name is set up. I didn’t know how to do that until someone showed me how. I’m sure that a lot of people don’t know I’m RTing them because I can’t find their @twittername.
.-= Jennifer Barry´s last blog ..Insider Secrets- Get a Job on a Cruise Ship =-.
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Hi Dave and Deb – Thought you might be interested in an update on a plugin that I originally discovered from one of your old blog posts. The Backtype Connect plugin has recently stopped working for me and they emailed me back stating that they’re retiring the plugin, which is unfortunate since it is very useful.
I thought this might be of interest to you in case you were wondering the same!
.-= Corinne @ Gourmantic´s last blog ..Le Passe-Muraille- Walking Through Walls in Montmartre =-.
Thanks Corinne. I have to say, I have just noticed these past few days that we haven’t been seeing our tweets from Twitter, I guess that explains it. Thanks for letting us all know about it. It’s a bummer. I will have to look for a similar one because I have noticed that more people comment on twitter more now than ever.
I’ve thought about installing CommentLuv before, but have been hesitant for fear of what kind of comments it would attract.
While all the comments on this blog seem like quality comments and not just people out for anchor text, we only see the front end, and of course cannot see what kind of volume of comments you actually see.
Do you get many spammy comments that you have to weed out that you can attribute to the commentLuv plugin being there?
I’ve actually enabled it myself today so I guess I will see if it improves the number of commenters, and also the quality of the comments.
.-= Aaron from Thailand hotels blog´s last blog ..Bangkok hotels on Twitter =-.
Hi Dave and Deb!
I was reading this section and have been trying to find the Post Navigation Widget so I can change the horrible links I now have. However the only ones I have found with that name are to be set up in the sidebar, which is not the case. Do you have the link to the plugin url, or perhaps the name of the author?
Thank you!
.-= Federico´s last blog ..Not Even a Year Old and Growing High– Thanks =-.
Great post! This is what I needed to bring my blog up another level. Can’t find the LinkedWithin Plugin though, it doesn’t show up on search results.
Mike Frisk recently posted..Travel Tribe Interview
I’m finally getting a chance to scour through all the detailed info that you share on your site. I’m taking notes and grateful for all the resources that you point us to. One of my new year’s resolutions was to choose a few great travel blogs to explore more thoroughly. Yours is right at the top of my list.
Thanks for the inspiration Dave and Deb, I’m looking forward to following my fellow Canuck travelers more closely.
Cheers!
Ken Kaminesky recently posted..Dawn at the Pantheon in Rome
Hi!
Thank very much! Very useful.
Greetings from the harz mountains…
Theplanetd.. I like it
I’ve seen most of the social plugins, but that shadowbox plugin is amazing. Glad I stumbled on this!
I do like the LinkWithin plugin – as long as you don’t go crazy and add so many plugins that your blog slows down (equals more bounces) stuff like this is great for getting people to browse further on your site.
Great find, thanks for sharing. I hope these work with the latest wp wersion.
Hopefully they work for you. We still have them on our site and we have upgraded regularly.
Great post! The world of plugins is very overwhelming to me at the moment (just getting ready to start blogging) so it’s good to have some direction. Cheers! I’ll be looking in to these now…..
Jarratt recently posted..Welcome to Shiny Shoestring!
Comment luv rules!
good luck to you!
Finnegan recently posted..Welche Honigsorten gibt es?
Agreed. It certainly encourages people to leave a message and it’s nice to be able to follow the link to see what their last post was.
Good luck with everything LeeAmanaJ, you will love wordpress.